Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Oh god it's more fucking memes. Oh hey guys, remember Portal? Yeah I do, too, maybe because it's not 2013 and we haven't forgotten about it yet and I think I speak for the rest of humanity we I say I am fucking sick of hearing about it. Yes it's fun, yes it's quirky and funny, yes, you've mentioned it before. So shut up already. I don't care if you are mentioning them in order to say that it is annoying to mention them; it's annoying to mention them. The end.

Remember when xkcd people used to talk like real people? I wonder what happened to those days. "Where have you been?" "Playing Half-Life 2" "Didn't that come out in 2004?" That's a real natural response - what's next? "What are you listening to?" "The Beatles?" "Didn't they break up in 1970?" People do play old games, you know. Is that so crazy?

I guess this comic is an example of what I've called Randall Munroe's Illustrated Picto-Blog - a place to write about ideas he has without the pressure of being funny. Not that this is a particularly interesting idea - but it's an even worse joke.

It doesn't stand up to even an iota of thought: The dude knows he is 5 years behind the times - so in 2013 he should know that everyone else has played Portal years ago. By spouting off the jokes, he isn't facing a "downside" to his idea so much as a "downside to him being fucking annoying."

i have totally despised the latest xkcds but can't help but have a few GOOMH moments: the day after I explained Idiocracy to my boyfriend's parents he came out with that lame Idiojackass comic; the day after we discussed where his parents went to sample wedding cakes was that stupid extrapolating comic; the day after my boyfriend explained "The cake is a lie" to his parents Randy came out with dumb old 606.

gasp

what if my boyfriend's parents are randall munroe holy shit you guys what the hell and i am dating his offspring

Anyway, a lot of people (myself included) didn't play Portal until early '08. Maybe stick-man was just busy with 5-years-too-late Bioshock?

The other thing that bugged me: C'mon, "the cake is a lie" appeared ONCE in that game. Only through the power of Internet did it become a meme. It is hardly the thing that someone would fixate on after playing it through five years later.

Like I said in the other thread, what really bugs me about 606 is the implication that if the guy ran up to his friends and started yelling lines from whatever game is new and popular in 2013, people would find it clever and hilarious. Except that in real life, it would be just as annoying and douchey as randomly quoting games that came out five (or six) years ago.

CAPTCHA: "conver," as in conversation, for which memes are not a valid substitute. THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 4CHAN AND REAL LIFE, RANDY. PLEASE LEARN THIS ASAP.

This is really just another wet dream fantasy for Randy, just disguised ever so slightly. All he wants is a plan to spout memes endlessly long after they're passe. But in this subconscious melodrama, the awful truth cannot escape him! But never fear, Randy's cannot "import understanding of human psyche", not even sudo will work! Let the ancient memes flow freely, like a NYT article on 4chan!

"In xkcd world, people look the same 5 years into the future as they do now."

Yes, Carl, in the near future, most people will have arms, legs, and torsos. Most people will even have heads. Some, but not all, will still have necks (others will have learned the art of cranial levitation, of course).

Harrison: That's where the comic should have gone. Instead of retreading the old meme, have the 2013 player show off old game forums for Portal and say something to the effect of, "Looks like one more advantage to arriving late..."

Actually, it isn't that bad. You don't need to understand UNIX to understand the Y2K38 problem: Because of how UNIX time works, it will rollover at a known point in early 2038. Because a lot of 'backbone' systems, as well as embedded systems, run on clocks like this, it could potentially cause a lot of problems, even more than Y2K could've.

Y2K, obviously, never had any real impact on anyone; especially not the world-ending apocalypse proclamations some were making about it.

The joke is that the Unix Time problem would be even worse than practically nothing at all happening. Whether that's funny is subjective, but there is a joke, and it's a well known problem, not just a shout-out to *nix fans.

Switching to 64-bit computing has FUCK ALL to do with solving the Y2038 problem.

Switching time_t to a 64-bit type is the most straightforward way to solve it, but that has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the register size of the host computer, and the insidious problems with a 32-bit time_t have to do mostly with the fact that a lot of file formats just hardcoded it to be a 4-byte number, JUST LIKE how most of the Y2K issues were because of databases being hardcoded to store a 2-digit year!

(also feba I was not aware that September is early in the year, perhaps you could enlighten me)

(and y2k would have been a problem if nobody raised a stink about it; the fact that there were very few actual problems is a testament to how well the engineering community banded together to fix a nasty problem caused by years of laziness and short-term thinking, but of course "Problem solved, world doesn't end" doesn't make for very good headlines)

oh also another straightforward short-ish-term (68-years) fix is to make time_t unsigned instead of signed but that just sort of masks the problem and would have ripple effects with other sloppily-coded systems

This one is pretty awful, but that GLaDOS/HAL comic is the fucking stupidest thing ever to come out related to Portal. There's no joke there. It's simply "GLaDOS and HAL are both rogue AI's and so I can make a comic about HAL and add GLaDOS JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT, RIGHT? There doesn't need to be a joke, because I can just quote the Portal song because that song is hilarious and so my comic will be hilarious."

The new one is ugh. It's basically the same premise as the "Oh god guys come 9999 it'll be Y2K all over again except it'll be Y10K lololol" jokes we've been hearin since 1997.

1. When I read Dragonlance Chronicles a few years ago I was talking with friends about the tragic character Reistlin. One of them told me to shut up or something like that because they've all read it and had this discussion years ago.2. I totally agree with the alt text. It makes me feel alone and cold inside when I see the abandoned servers of my favorite games.3. I do the same as 5 years ago Mr. Stick, and it's not really so different than that South Park episode in which they find a frozen guy from the five years ago city (I forgot its name).

Fred:This reminds me one of the favorite starting lines in Dinosaur Comic:(i don't really remember how it goes, but it goes something like that:)"You know who is the greatest person?Me, T-rex! I am the greatest person!"

So in this comic it was something like:"You know who is a crazy AI new-comer?GlaDOS! GlaDOS from Portal is the crazy AI new-comer!"

"607 = horrible. There, I put just as much effort into this post as Randy did in writing 607."

Exactly.

*sigh* its getting harder and harder to even find anything to say anymore. 606 i have nothing, and 607 jesus christ almighty, its just a mediocre passing observation at this point referencing something technical. Its doubtful this will even be an issue 20 years from now in the first place.

20 years to prepare for this, and who knows what technology will be like in 2038.

I hate this "cartoon" so much. It's not even a cartoon, i dont even have a name for it.

For some people, actually, it is. The problem here, as I see it, is that playing old games is a very predictable behaviour for the xkcd audience, so Randall is going for a VERY, VERY easy target. And yeah, besides, the actual joke is way, way too lame. Couldn't he think of anything better, really? At least this strip is a reasonable excuse for me to say Portal is probably the worst même-machine EVER. YOUR BRAIN IS A LIE.

Now, I have the impression that Randall is trying to manipulate my feelings; just as I was ready to proclaim xkcd as "dead", the latest strip redeemed things completely. Yes, it's a nerd joke about computers and UNIX... JUST the kind of thing xkcd used to do back "when it was good". Those who "can't see the joke" are trying too hard to complain about it.

Also funny is that, lately there were complaints that the maths on xkcd were getting "too easy". Now that Randall is making an observation on a VERY basic and easily understandable UNIX "feature" (it's not a bug!), people complain that they don't get it.

I've got an idea for a T-shirt now:"If your webcomic demands any kind of previous knowledge, it sucks."Or better yet:"Wikipedia? What is that?"Or:"Wikipedia? I don't know it, but I hate it already."

The sad part is so many people do still make Portal references to me. It's been almost two years, guys, I do not need to hear that fucking cake line ever again, especially not from someone who thinks it constitutes humour to reference something.

Also about the 2038 problem for anyone who isn't entirely certain, on 32 bit systems some time (January 19th I believe) in 2038 the way that UNIX stores time will hit its maximum value (01111111 11111111 11111111 11111111) and in several systems the left-most (most significant) bit actually stores the sign of a number (whether it's positive or negative - 0 for a positive number and 1 for a negative). So it will then increment to (10000000 00000000 00000000 00000000) which is the most negative number, this will reset the date to 1901, breaking any time-dependant systems. You might think we have until 2038 to solve this, but several systems actually have items set to occur some time in the future, hitting the 2038 epoch early, such as this AOL server crash. Workarounds are already underway and it's unlikely to be a problem to the vast majority of people... but of course the issue about embedded systems is there, but I'm sure something will be done to sort it out. 64-bit systems will be unaffected, naturally, as their time will be 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 10000000 00000000 00000000 00000000.

The first line is, "...because I wasn't looking forward to convincing people to care about the Unix 2038 problem." The reference is that Y2K baffled alot of people because it was supposed to be the apocalypse, and nothing happened, and we've got another one of these issues coming up. The joke is the idea of the Y2K phenomenon happening over this Unix 2038 situation. Like, haha, imagine Y2K happening again, man, we were gullible. It's not a fervent plea for people to wake up, cause, oh my god, the university server might go down for a few hours and I won't get to play 5-year-old games online!

i love this blog, happy i discovered it today.. and u know i was googling for something like : who hates xkcd, cuz my friend keeps on emailing me these supposed-to-be-jokes, and i never get the fun out of reading them ... he loves them .. so i wanted to know that is it just me, but glad to find this blog, i'm not the only one :)

Re the numerous "only geeks use Unix!" complaints: The vast majority of the WWW is hosted on Unix servers. You interact with Unix machines on a daily basis.

Moreover -- and someone correct me if I'm wrong, since it's been a long time since I've done any C/C++ in a Windows environment -- the problem is cross-platform. Using time_t in a Windows environment will still cause you to run into this problem. (Fernie, take note. Also, if you're spelling it UNIX, there's a good chance you're not "xkcd's target audience.")

None of this makes 607 any funnier, but the point is that there's enough to complain about without talking out your butts about it being an "obscure" Unix comic.

I, at least, never said it was super obscure or anything, just that I personally didn't get it (I've had ONE computer science class, in high school, that was the basics of Java and object-oriented programming), and that it could well be that it's self-defeating. I don't know.

The problem makes sense, I suppose, but it seems that there are a number of solutions, short-term and comprehensive, that'll be implemented soon enough. So, um, I'm relieved.

I don't think I saw anyone mention that 606 is essentially comic 286. They both even have the idea that a five year old meme is lame (although 286 supposes that a meme could eventually become cool because it's retro after a few decades).

My first internet meme was Ate My Balls, which I hope never comes back. My favorite is either All Your Base or the Rickroll.

Yeah Randall, nice. You know people do play old games just because they're fun. I play HL2 all the time, as well as Counter-Strike Source, KOTOR 2, and Halo. They're all a few years old. It's really not that big of a deal to play old games Randall.

Don't know where to post this, but Sanjay over at Cowbirds referenced Randall in his alt-text a while back. What makes it cool is that he's taking the piss out of Randall's obsession with Jurassic Park.

The biggest problem I had with 606 is that portal runs on HL2's engine. There are minimal (if any) graphical improvements. So a system that could run HL2 flawlessly could also run Portal just as flawlessly. :\

and the "y2k38 bug" has been around since the y2k bug was. I distinctly remember reading that it would be a bigger problem back then. Sigh.

It's a shame that the Portal même because so widespread and cliché, because it pretty much killed off completely my wish to play it.

And I have to say it here, but putting HAL 9000 and glados in the same strip was probably the most painful, horrifying and suicide-inducing thing Randall ever committed to his webcomic. It's an atrocity, and that strip came as a punch in my face just when I was at the height of my appreciation for xkcd. It would have been less horrible if he had suggested a partnership between J.S. Bach and Scott Stapp (from Creed). Damn that. Randall, get out of my bladder.

I think Portal is so great because it's a short game with interesting puzzles and a decent sense of humor, and it was just the right length. There's no reason for a game to be "full length" - that would have just been tedious.

Really, the only parts of Portal which gets excessively quoted are "THE CAKE IS A LIE" and "THIS WAS A TRIUMPH" and those are just two jokes out of like a hundred.

It's like how when Fight Club came out people were all "THE FIRST RULE ABOUT blah IS YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT blah" and "YOU ARE NOT A BEAUTIFUL AND UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE."

People just have a tendency to quote the most memorable lines in pretty good things. It is probably one of those things which started out as a survival trait but went goofy when we stopped being hunter/gatherers. It's like bees communicating pollen locations or something.

Don't hate something just because everyone else likes it enough that they quote it incessantly.

I started to hate Portal once it got overrated majorly. Sort of like xkcd.

Yeah, it's fun, but it's also way too easy and short. Not that there's a problem with that, but the game ends right when it's starting to get challenging. You can fly through that game without much trouble, even on your first time through.

Considering I had already played Narbacular Drop (by the same people obviously), I wasn't giving Portal a pass just for novelty.

I'm not saying it was bad or anything. It just became hugely overhyped by reviews and people alike. I enjoyed Episode 2 out of the Orange Box a lot more, actually.

Releasing Portal was like putting out a 30 min motion picture with the best actors and plot, and calling that a movie.

Or putting out a fifty-page work of written fiction with incredible plot and characters and themes and calling it a short story.

First of all, there IS no generally accepted length for a single-player game, the way movies are typically between 90 and 180 minutes long. Six to eight hours for a game is reasonable--but so is thirty to fifty, depending on the genre. So is two to four. There isn't a magic number that makes a game become full-length.Second, there simply is no intrinsic virtue in a game being long OR a game being hard. Portal was short and easy but very, very good. I haven't checked, but I would be extremely surprised if there wasn't an extensive modding community that's used the SDK to build tons of new Portal levels.

Third, Portal never even purported to be as long as most current generation games--it costs $20, and if you got the Orange Box and count everything in it as one game it averaged out to $10 or $12 there. $6 now that the Orange Box is ridiculously cheap. So, at the VERY least, nobody ripped you off by charging you fifty or sixty bucks for a mere four hours of entertainment.

I rather like the recent trend towards keeping games shorter and more concise. 60 hours of game is no fun when 55 of them are filler. Braid and Portal were both exactly the right length.

Similarly, short films can be much more satisfying than feature-length movies. A lot of stories really only need half an hour to be told and don't need to be dragged out to 2+ hours (I am looking at you Steven Spielberg!).

Carl said: "In xkcd world, people look the same 5 years into the future as they do now."

This is a prime example of the kind of inane criticisms found scattered throughout this blog.

FFS, I look pretty much the same now as I did five years ago, and whatever differences there are sure as hell wouldn't be noticeable if I were rendered in stick figure form.

What, do you think that five years later he should have a fucking walking stick? Or maybe they should all be wearing space-age bubblesuits?

It's not just that you over think things when trying to criticise this strip - it's that you over think things in a stupidly misguided way.

For example, carping over the fact that Portal came out in late 2007. Yes, this means that for the character to be quoting from it in early 2013, he probably played it five years and a few months after the release date. OMG! But he said five years! THAT IS NOT EXACTLY FIVE YEARS! RANDALL FAIL!!! Derrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Oh wait... I just saw this comment from Carl:

"I dunno - how hard is it to add 2007 to 5, and get 2012 as the correct result? I thought he liked math."

Ahahahaha. You idiot. If he was playing it at any time before October 2012, it would mean he was playing it LESS than five years after the release date.

Here, let me explain: if he was playing it in mid January 2013, and the game was released on October 9, 2007, that would mean the game had been out for almost FIVE years and 3.5 months. (ie. A little under 3 months of 2007 + 2008 + 2009 + 2010 + 2011 + 2012 + half a month of 2013 = 5 years + just under 3.5 months)

The fact that you just went: duhhhh, 2007 + 5 = 2012 shows how inept you are at grasping even simple concepts.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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